Focus West Michigan
Focus West Michigan 7-3-24
Today on Focus West Michigan, EGLE has announced millions in Clean Water Plan grants. The Kent County Board of Commissioners is reviewing the Opioid Settlement Fund spending plan. Patrick Center has an analysis of the car market so far this year, and more state and West Michigan news. For WGVU, I'm Joe Bilecki, today is Wednesday, July 3, 2024. Focus West Michigan is brought to you by listeners like you. To support this show and everything we do, visit WGVUNews.org and click the donate button. The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy announced 12.6 million in my Clean Water Plan grants. WGVU's David Limbaugh explains how two West Michigan communities will benefit from this funding. According to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, or EGLE, 70% of Michiganders are served by more than 1,000 community wastewater systems. And a similar percentage get drinking water from community water systems. These systems often lack the necessary resources to address issues like aging drinking and storm water facilities. The My Clean Water Plan grants recently announced by EGLE aimed to help communities throughout the state upgrade aging infrastructure, ensure healthy drinking water, and protect Michigan's environment. The City of North Muskegon, along with 22 other Michigan communities, was awarded nearly $600,000 in technical, managerial, and financial grants, in order to identify or verify lead service lines in preparation for replacement. Also the City of Muskegon, along with four other Michigan communities, will receive nearly 123,000 in affordability and planning grants, which will provide funding to assist in planning and affording water infrastructure improvements, including lead service line replacements. Since January of 2019, the State of Michigan has invested over $4 billion to upgrade various water facilities throughout the state. Supporting over 57,000 jobs, I'm David Limbaugh. The Kent County Board of Commissioners is reviewing a spending plan for the first two years of its opioid settlement funds, WGVU St. Morrison reports. Kent County is slated to receive more than $12 million through the year 2038 in opioid settlement funds. The money comes from nationwide lawsuits against opioid manufacturers and distributors. The settlements are distributed to states, then allocated to counties to mitigate the harm of the opioid epidemic. Kent County's opioid task force collaborates with public health experts, law enforcement, and community organizations to assess needs and adjust strategies. The task force proposed a two-year spending plan to reduce opioid misuse and overdose deaths and to support recovery efforts. That plan will be discussed in committee on July 16 and by the full Board of Commissioners on July 18. Anyone with questions on the proposed spending plan is urged to contact their county commissioner. I'm Dee Morrison. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources wants residents to keep fire safety front and center for the Fourth of July holiday. WGVU's Jennifer Moss has more. It doesn't matter whether your Fourth of July plans include fireworks, camping, off-road vehicle riding, or even free time to work in your yard. DNR officials want you to be mindful, taking care to keep from sparking a wildfire. It's very important because we don't want to see anybody else's property damage. We don't want to see homes lost or any types of structures lost due to that, so we always ask that, you know, follow your neighbors in mind because we just don't want that type of loss. Paul Rogers is a DNR fire prevention specialist. He says nine out of ten fires are caused by people. He says everyone needs to be careful when using fireworks or doing other outdoor activities. For campfires, we ask that always make sure, depending on where you're located, check with your local fire department or local township or village to make sure they're allowing campfires. With fireworks, some of the things we're asking is make sure you try not to shoot them into the woods and general overall safety, whether you're doing fireworks or having campfires, make sure you have some water nearby. Rogers highlights having that water nearby could make a big difference. You can find more safety tips and information at michigan.gov/firemanagement. I'm Jennifer Moss. A recent fatal shooting on the southeast side of Grand Rapids has been ruled a homicide by the Kent County Medical Examiner. WGVU's David Limbaugh has more on the investigation. Grand Rapids police say officers were dispatched to Ardmore Street Southeast and Thelma Avenue Southeast around 12-20 a.m. June 29 on reports of the sound of gunfire. Officers discovered evidence of a weapon being discharged but no victims were located at the scene. A short time later, an adult male arrived at a local hospital with a non-life-threatening gunshot wound. Around 3 a.m., a second victim, also an adult male, arrived at a local hospital. This second victim, who has been identified as 35-year-old Jeremy Parnell, died from a gunshot wound to the chest. GRPD says an investigation by the major case team is ongoing. Anyone with information is asked to call the Grand Rapids Police Department or Silent Observer. I'm David Limbaugh. First Lady Jill Biden spent the morning at a West Michigan children's camp in Middle WGVU's Dean Morrison reports. First Lady Jill Biden met with families, staff, and campers on Wednesday at YMCA's Camp Manitoulin in Middleville. She highlighted Biden administration programs that help ensure children don't go hungry when school is out, focusing on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Sun Meals Program. Joe's administration is providing kids with meals and snacks at no cost at summer meal sites like schools and camps, including right here at Camp Manitoulin. The camp typically serves 300 campers a day with federally funded meals each summer. Under the new Sunbucks benefit option, parents whose children receive free and reduced priced meals during the school year are eligible for extra grocery money in the summer. $120 for each one of their kids. Here in Michigan, this new Sunbucks program will give more food to almost 1 million children this summer, and it will give their parents a little bit of breathing room at the checkout counter. As part of her Joining Forces initiative to support military families, Biden also met with campers participating in Camp Corral and the Hidden Helpers Program. The campers made an art mural for the first lady to take back to Washington and display at the White House to bring awareness of the 2.3 million children of wounded ill or injured service members and veterans. I'm Dean Morrison. Some Republican Michigan state lawmakers are filing an appeal in their lawsuit against two voter-approved constitutional amendments. Colin Jackson has more. The amendments changed state election law to expand ballot access, but Republican Representative Steve Cara says under the U.S. and Michigan Constitution, only state legislatures can change election law. Article 12, Section 2 of the Michigan Constitution, affords the availability for people to run a ballot measure on other issues, simply not the time, place and manner of conducting elections. Michael Davis Jr. of the group Promote the Vote argues the amendments were lawfully passed and the lawsuit would disenfranchise voters. You know, people in Michigan, they care deeply about their democracy. That's why our commonsense proposals passed with so much support. A lower court dismissed the lawsuit saying the lawmakers didn't have standing to sue. I'm Colin Jackson in Lansing. Michigan election officials are urging the state's highest court to overturn a decision in favor of an election worker who was charged with committing fraud in the 2022 primary election. A previous ruling had found the Kent County election inspector inserted a personal USB flash drive into an electronic poll book, with the intent to download the names of voters. The decision was dismissed by a state appeals court in April. Now a bipartisan group of more than two dozen state officials are asking the Michigan Supreme Court to review the decision, Lansing clerk Chris Swope is part of the coalition. He says the case's dismissal undermines election security and privacy. What if someone inserted a thumb drive and it has a virus on it, then suddenly no other voters can be registered or can be marked as voting in the precinct or you're unable to run the required reports at the end of the night, it's pretty frightening what could happen. According to the appeals court's decision, the election worker did not violate state law because the files were only copied and not altered. The Michigan Supreme Court is expected to hear oral arguments on the case later this summer. I'm Stephen Hill, on the next arts of space, flying and floating with weightless summers space music by Marcona Union, Ashira, Stute Janks, Gulan, a produce and Ruben Garcia. A program called Thermos on the next arts of space. Sunday night at nine here on WGVU FM, the WGVU app and your smart speaker. How is the US automobile market shaping up in 2024? WGVU's Patrick Center talked with Mike Wall, who's the executive director of automotive analysis for S&P, global mobility. Yeah, this work gets to be a kind of a better news story. If we talk last year at this time, there are a lot of concerns around when's the recession going to hit? Is it going to be second quarter? Are we going to finish a year out in a recessionary environment? The recession that was talked about last year was the most anticipated recession to never hit. And what we've seen is actually kind of measured improvement in the economic environment as the year progressed. Now flash forward and now, you know, we still don't have a recession called out in our forecast at this point. And we have been making some similar minor upgrades to our own US outlook as an example, but still upgrades nonetheless. The big question right now, so that's certainly augers well, and there's similar upgrades in some of those international markets as well, maybe not necessarily as robust as we've seen some of the upgrades here in the US, but certainly noteworthy nonetheless. But we're now all eyes turned this year is going to be what the Fed does. When do we see any signs of rate reductions? And this is particularly important for vehicle sales because, you know, we've got a consumer base that, you know, for better or for worse is in many cases payment driven. It's inextricably tied to financing. And when cost of financing goes up, makes a little harder to sell these vehicles or more costly to sell the vehicles because you may have to incentivize them or subsidize the rates and what have you. So it is critically important that we would hopefully see some great reduction. The big question is when, of course, do we see it more mid year? I think there was some hope, maybe, maybe it was more hope than reality, hope that we might see it in March, but that clearly doesn't appear to be in the cards. Do we see it more in maybe mid year and how many rate cuts, if we do get some or is it just kind of a one and done kind of thing? All of these are key considerations as we think about kind of continuing to move the metal through the year. In general, though, I would say, I mean, we've seen still, I think, a pretty overall positive selling environment. Our own U.S. like vehicle sales outlook for this year is 15.9 million units versus about 15.6 or 15.7 last year. Now that's lower than the pre-COVID number of 17 one, admittedly, but I do think, you know, even for this year, we could see a 16 handle. We could see us, you know, getting at that 16 million unit number, which is still pretty positive. That's very constructive and I think it's indicative too. I do think there's some lingering pent up demand out there. The challenge is what we alluded to earlier. It depends on the vehicle. Again, the pent up demand is not for the 70, 80, 90 thousand dollar vehicles. That's not where the pent up demand lies, believe me, we've been leaning on those to try to, you know, through the COVID crisis when automakers could only produce certain amounts of vehicles, they produce the higher trim, higher margin product, makes all the sense of the world. Where the pent up demand resides is more in your entry in, you know, I'd call it mainstream vehicles, lower price, lower cost, and to the extent these automakers bring more of those vehicles back out to market, that's where I think you're going to see even some further success in selling vehicles. We've got interest rates as an issue impacting the consumer adding cost. Are we past the chip shortage when we didn't have the inventories in place? Is there now inventory on any make and model? Yeah, no, that's a great question. There largely is and we have seen just a radical improvement in inventory levels and supply. There are some pockets where we need to see some more inventory. I would say, especially with some of the Japanese automakers and maybe even some of the Korean automakers. So there's some opportunity to grow and frankly, we think that's going to support production this year in North America especially. And then a key priority to that too, is we do still have the need for some additional entry and again, mainstream vehicle offerings in dealers. We've seen some improvement there as well, so I think compact crossovers, midsize crossovers. We're seeing more of those hitting the market, but I think there's still some opportunity to grow there. There are more popular vehicles as an example, Chevy tracks, again, I'm not here to sell any one in particular, but when you look at that vehicle, more of an entry level crossover transacting well below $30,000, I mean, that's a sweet spot in the market right now. When you've got an average transaction price, that's closer to $45,000 to $47,000. So the more we can bring out those type of vehicles, I think that's where you're going to find some, I think, ready and willing buyers at that point. Is this the rebirth of the geotractor? Okay, you know, not on the internet, it's what do you bring that up actually? Quite possibly of a current day version of that, if you think about a, you know, utility vehicle that's more and hopefully more in crossover type vein, because that's where the market is. The market is, you know, highly aligned to crossover utility vehicles. So yeah, the more entry level offerings, entry to mid level offerings, again, I don't want to relegate this to just a kind of a quote unquote "cheek" car discussion. And that really isn't what, like, the tracks is and some of these other vehicles, they're actually pretty well appointed and they're a lot different than your father's geotractor and from that perspective, I mean, these are head and shoulders above some of those older account boxes and very well executed. So what you're seeing is consumers able to get into a vehicle, again, in a more cost-affordable manner, but yeah, with a lot of the accoutrements you might see in a, you know, at least a higher end vehicle or, you know, a mid-range vehicle. And again, I think we got a lot of ready, willing, enabled buyers that for those type of vehicles. Before I let you go, what are you keeping an eye on? Where do you see opportunity and what are some of the challenges out there? Yeah, great question. I mean, you know, it's election year. I always have to throw that out there when it's an election year. There's always the possibility for some volatility, even associated with that or even maybe not even with so much volatility, but some freezing, if you will, in the sense of, you know, automaker suppliers can tend to kind of get to some wait and see approaches and things like that, which again, that may completely natural, you know, it's certainly nothing wrong with that. And it may be actually a wise call, but that's maybe something to watch as the year progresses. Do we start to see some plans and strategies slow somewhat just to kind of say, we're going to wait. We want to see what happens in November. So I'm watching that, watching to see any effects of that and how that might influence things. I mentioned this earlier too. Again, interest rates, watching those like a hawk. I really want to see what the Fed does on that front, how that might translate through the consumer and in their psyche. And then going forward, the other eye is heavily focused on battery electric, what we're doing, how we're deploying. Again, how we are coming along on the education process of the consumer and this super critical need to build out charging infrastructure. Again, that part and parcel of this, it's not the only thing, but it's a big thing. It's an important consideration, especially for a consumer base that has still still got concerns on this front and it's not going to be easily overcome without having sort of a multifaceted approach to, again, educate and overcome some of those concerns. Mike Wall, Automotive Analyst with S&P Global, thank you so much. Alright, thanks so much. This has been Focus West Michigan from WGVU for Wednesday, July 3, 2024. I'm Joe Bilecki. Our audio operations manager is Rick Bierling and our news and public affairs director is Patrick Center. We'll be back with more news and events in West Michigan on Monday, wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. [Music], thank you. [Music] (gentle music)